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The last paragraph of an editorial that appears in this morning's NY Times:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/16SAT3.html>
"As Mr. Bush's "growth" program rolls out, the richest 1 percent of
Americans can expect an estimated 17 percent cut in their taxes by
2010, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The
other 99 percent get a 5 percent cut - along with accumulated
deficits of $4 billion or more across the next 10 years and the lost
chance that the now-vanished surplus might be used to protect their
future Social Security benefits."
Incredible.
--
John Mallinckrodt mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm
To: Forum for Physics Educators <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
From: Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Off Topic-Political (was Report on Misuse of Science)
I notice a certain congruence between Hake's reportage, and a
note I received recently on another list, reporting a speech
from the winner of the popular vote in the recent general election,
Gore. This is political skirmishing, no doubt - still, I was
impressed by the general tenor of the former vice president's
talk in the academic milieu.
Here is an edited passage.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
found at http://www.moveon.org/gore-speech.html
speech by Former Vice President Al Gore
Remarks to MoveOn.org
New York University
August 7, 2003
-AS PREPARED-
Ladies and Gentlemen:
/snip/
Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional
rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've
even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference
between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a
totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of
basic honesty.
Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion
that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the
latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for
most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and
healthy workings of our democracy.
Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the
truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of
self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred
method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of
Reason as the best way to establish the truth.
The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic
process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know
the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might
contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their
ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas.
There are at least a couple of problems with this approach:
First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into
the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions
-- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of
favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or
subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what
they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they
have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.
That's what happened, for example, when Vice President Cheney invited all
of those oil and gas industry executives to meet in secret sessions with
him and his staff to put their wish lists into the administration's
legislative package in early 2001.
That group wanted to get rid of the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, of
course, and the Administration pulled out of it first thing. The list of
people who helped write our nation's new environmental and energy policies
is still secret, and the Vice President won't say whether or not his
former company, Halliburton, was included. But of course, as practically
everybody in the world knows, Halliburton was given a huge open-ended
contract to take over and run the Iraqi oil fields-- without having to bid
against any other companies.
Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having
to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the
American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations
where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with
simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up
the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come
out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a
big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or
distort it.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, the White House ordered its own EPA to
strip important scientific information about the dangers of global warming
out of a public report. Instead, the White House substituted information
that was partly paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. This week,
analysts at the Treasury Department told a reporter that they're now being
routinely ordered to change their best analysis of what the consequences
of the Bush tax laws are likely to be for the average person.
Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and
selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq
is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best
available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available
evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget
proposals.
In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in
advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and
supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of
any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of
informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.
The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to
imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central
doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its
purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with
as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through
big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.
For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they
also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public
interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they
really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone,
rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At 11:49 AM 8/9/2003 -0700, you wrote:
/snip/ the Washington Post
on the report ... prepared for Representative Henry Waxman
(D-Calif) /snip/
According to the latter page:
"The American people depend upon federal agencies to develop
science-based policies that protect the nation's health and welfare.
Recently, however, leading scientific journals have begun to question
whether scientific integrity at federal agencies has been sacrificed
to further a political and ideological agenda. At the request of Rep.
Henry A. Waxman, the minority staff of the Government Reform
Committee assessed the treatment of science and scientists by the
Bush Administration. . . . . The Bush Administration has manipulated,
distorted, or interfered with science on health, environmental, and
other key issues. Find your issue below and read more [each item is
hot-linked to the relevant section of [CGRMS 2003],
Abstinence-Only Education
Agricultural Pollution
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Breast Cancer
Condoms
Drinking Water
Education Policy
Environmental Health
Food Safety
Global Warming
HIV/AIDS
Lead Poisoning
Missile Defense
Oil and Gas
Prescription Drug Advertising
Reproductive Health
Stem Cells
Substance Abuse
Wetlands
Workplace Safety
Yellowstone National Park
According to Weiss (2002) "The White House quickly dismissed the
report as partisan sniping."
/snip/
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!